The thrust areas of the Centre during the current phase are i) economic cooperation; ii) political and security issues; iii) gender issues and iv) ethnicity on which the Centre is focusing to undertake in-depth research studies. For the effective functioning of the Centre, an inter-disciplinary Advisory Committee has been constituted for advising and monitoring the administration as well as the research output. A separate Working Group Committee is formed by involving the experts from the relevant disciplines of the University under the inter-departmental collaborative research programme to strengthen the research output of the Centre. The proposal to introduce M.Phil./Ph.D programme in the Centre has been approved and is likely to be implemented from the next academic year.

        The Centre has been organizing discussions/symposia/conferences, national and international seminars on contemporary issues relevant to South Asian regional cooperation. The Centre organized several seminars during the last three phases and a national seminar on BIMSTEC: Towards a Bay of Bengal Economic Community in November 2005, another on Female Deficit in July 2005 in association with the School of Economics in the current phase. An international seminar on WTO and Its Implication for South Asia was organized in March, 2004 also. The Proceedings of the seminars on WTO and BIMSTEC are being published by M/s Serials Publications and M/s Gyan Publishers, New Delhi respectively and the volumes are expected to be released in September/October, 2006.